"Don't know exactly--diamonds, I suppose. You men get your stuff and get out of here. I guess you're all right. How are you going to get home?"
"We've got a launch down at the wharf," one of them replied. "She ain't much to look at, and ain't any race horse, but she does manage to get through the water a bit. Good enough for our business, I reckon."
"Get your stuff and come along. I'll see you through the lines," the captain told them. "We'll have to search your shop, baker. I'll leave a couple of men to do that."
"All right. But I ain't in the diamond business," the baker said, grinning.
The captain opened the door and motioned for the five fishermen to pass him. He conducted them to the street and across it, and passed them through the lines. They went on toward the waterfront, talking loudly, swaggering and staggering a bit, jesting, and now and then singing a snatch of song.
Four of them carried a loaf of bread each. The fifth man carried a dozen light biscuits beneath his arm.
And in those biscuits was a fortune in diamonds!
Again the morning newspapers carried full-page stories of the depredations of the Black Star and his band. Once more the police were called idiots, and demands were made that the chief resign. Sheriff Kowen was held up to scorn.
The newspapers carried another story, too--that Roger Verbeck had had a quarrel with the chief of police over the way the fight against the Black Star was being conducted, had left police headquarters with Muggs, too angry to speak to the reporters, and had declared afterward, when seen at his apartment, that he was done. Why should he perform the duties of the police and at the same time submit to the abuse of the imbecile chief, he was said to have asked? As far as he was concerned, the Black Star could loot banks and private residences and conduct himself as he pleased. Roger Verbeck might, within a few days, take himself out of the city and remain until there was some resemblance of law and order again.
The chief of police merely admitted that there had been trouble between himself and Verbeck, and said that he felt the police force capable of attending to its own affairs without any help from plain citizens, a remark that caused more than one caustic editorial.